Minecraft is a sandbox video game that allows players to experience social interaction along with being a nearly-infinite creative outlet. Credit: Courtesy of Liam Powis
Minecraft, Among Us and other popular multiplayer video games have been key in allowing students to stay social during a socially-distant school year.
Following a restriction on in-person student organization gatherings and events to 10 or fewer people, according to a student organization community announcement Oct. 14, the Buckeye Gaming Collective aims to give students another chance to interact with each other through its bi-weekly Friday online game nights, Nishant Sathe, a third-year in electrical and computer engineering and the director of community management for the BGC, said.
“I think it’s especially important that BGC offers these game nights,” Sathe said.
Sathe said in these current times, many people have trouble adjusting to being social in an online atmosphere, but the BGC’s game nights provide an easy way of being able to interact with other students. They interact by using their Ohio State dot number to gain access to the university’s Discord server — essentially Skype for gamers.
“I think it’s fantastic,” Liam Powis, a third-year in material sciences and engineering and a community manager for the BGC, said. “It’s really cool to still have actual club activities even when things are shut down.”
The BGC hosts game nights with different themes, focusing on either competitive or casual gameplay. Competitive titles include esports such as League of Legends, Valorant and Rocket League, while casual game nights include party games designed for large groups of players in a more relaxed environment, Sathe said.
“We had a ‘Halloween Game Night’ over a week back that was Among Us themed,” Sathe said. “It was fun seeing new people coming up to play that usually weren’t very active outside the chats themselves.”
Among Us is a social deduction game similar to Mafia and Werewolf in which players must discern who is an impostor. Sathe said part of Among Us’ popularity is due to its accessibility as a free-to-play game with phone and computer versions that are compatible with each other.
“The ease of gameplay and the convenience of being able to play wherever and whenever has really bolstered the interaction between communities as well,” Sathe said.
Although Powis does not organize every game night, he said he is in charge of the Minecraft-themed nights. Powis said there are more than 200 people in the student organization who play Minecraft and the club’s multiplayer Minecraft server has been online 24/7 since before the semester started.
Powis said one of the reasons he thinks Minecraft is good for a multiplayer experience is that the game works like a sandbox, where players have nearly infinite possibilities in what they want to do in it.
Powis said some of the highlights of the server include seeing other’s high-quality house designs, a golden gladiator statue, his recreation of the Tom W. Davis Clock Tower and a game night where everyone who was online dug a giant hole together.
“It sounds boring, but it was actually a lot of fun,” Powis said. “We all got into voice chat together, somebody actually wrote a Bible for the hole — like a hole-y text,” Powis said.
Powis said the online nature of the game nights benefits both those who are healthy and those at risk of serious symptoms of COVID-19.
“If gaming is a thing that sounds like something you’d want to do with a ton of other people, come on down, there’s always a group of people looking to play,” Sathe said.
Sathe said the organization continuously works on reaching out to students through social media and letting them know there is a space for them to interact in their Discord server, which has more than 2,000 people.
